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Committee voted to release around
fifty transcripts from the committee’s
investigation, but, to date, only two
transcripts—those of Erik Prince and
Carter Page—have been made avail-
able. Schiff has promised to expedite
the release of the others. Among the
interviews to be disclosed is one with
Kushner, as well as others with the
Trump associates Hope Hicks, Corey
Lewandowski, Steve Bannon, Roger
Stone, Michael Cohen, and former At-
torney General Jeff Sessions. Page, a
foreign-policy adviser to the Trump
campaign, who has a Ph.D. from the
School of Oriental and African Stud-
ies, at the University of London, later
tried to minimize his contacts with
Russian government officials during
his 2016 visit to Russia. During Schiff ’s
questioning of Page, the congressman
referred to a television interview that
Page had given. “ You stated that you
had no meetings, no serious discus-
sions with anyone high up or in any
official capacity; it’s just kind of man-
in-the-street, you know,” Schiff said.
“ Was that an accurate description of
your trip to Moscow in July of last year?”
“Absolutely,” Page responded.
Schiff then asked whether Page con-
sidered Arkady Dvorkovich, the Dep-
uty Prime Minister of the Russian Fed-
eration at the time, to be a “high-up
official or someone in an official ca-
pacity.” Page sputtered that he did not
“meet with” Dvorkovich: “I greeted
him briefly as he was walking off the
stage after his speech.”
Schiff, closing the trap he had laid,
pointed to a memo that Page had writ-
ten to Trump campaign officials, which
stated, “In a private conversation, Dvor-
kovich expressed strong support for
Mr.Trump.... ”
“Dr. Page,” Schiff said, “did you write
that?” Page said that he did, asserting,
“ That ’s all he expressed in that brief
hello.” Schiff zeroed in: “Two minutes
ago, you said you had no private meet-
ing with Arkady. Is that correct?”
“ Yes,” Page said.
“And now you say you did have
a private conversation with him on
the subject of U.S.-Russia relations.
Is that correct?” Page struggled to
change the subject.
The partisan donnybrook in the
Intelligence Committee continued
through April, 2018, when the Repub-
licans and the Democrats released sep-
arate final reports. Nunes and the other
Republicans concluded that the “com-
mittee found no evidence that the
Trump campaign colluded, coordi-
nated, or conspired with the Russian
government.” Schiff and the Demo-
crats wrote, “ The Majority’s report
reflects a lack of seriousness and inter-
est in pursuing the truth. By refusing
to call in key witnesses, by refusing to
request pertinent documents, and by
refusing to compel and enforce wit-
ness cooperation and answers to key
questions, the Majority hobbled the
Committee’s ability to conduct a cred-
ible investigation that could inspire
public confidence.”
Oddly, the first turning point in
Schiff ’s career also involved an
investigation that initially ended in
frustration, and that also concerned an
employee of the federal government
who betrayed his country to Russia
(then the Soviet Union). Richard
Miller, the first F.B.I. agent to be pros-
ecuted for espionage against the United
States, was arrested in Los Angeles on
October 3, 1984, along with a Russian
émigré couple named Svetlana and
Nikolai Ogorodnikov, who were, it
emerged, sleeper K.G.B. agents as-
signed to the United States. Miller,
who had eight children and was bur-
dened with financial problems, was in-
volved in an extramarital affair with
Svetlana and, it was alleged, passed her
an F.B.I. counterintelligence manual
and other classified documents in re-
turn for a promise of fifty thousand
dollars in cash and fifteen thousand
dollars in gold.
Robert Bonner, then the U.S. At-
torney in Los Angeles, tried the case
himself. Miller’s first trial ended in a
hung jury. Bonner won a conviction in
the retrial, but that verdict was over-
turned by an appeals court, on the
ground that evidence relating to a poly-
graph test had been improperly admit-
ted against Miller. Bonner, who had
been nominated for a federal judge-
ship, assigned the case to Schiff, who
had just turned thirty, to try it for a
third time. “I had total faith and trust
in him, or I wouldn’t have assigned
such a high-profile case to him,” Bon-
ner told me.
At the time, Schiff ’s ambitions were
beginning to take shape. Born in 1960,
“ The takeout finally came, so you can stop your panic cooking.”
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